Cornelia's Table is a safe centre, from which individuals may diverge on little exploring expeditions; for the paths here are not labyrinthine, and the hall is conspicuous from various neighboring points of view. In most regions of the cave, it is hazardous to lose sight of the guide. If you think to walk straight ahead, even for a few rods, and then turn short round and return to him, you will find it next to impossible to do so. So many paths come in at acute angles; they look so much alike; and the light of a lamp reveals them so imperfectly, that none but the practised eye of a guide can disentangle their windings. A gentleman who retraced a few steps, near the entrance of the cave, to find his hat, lost his way so completely, that he was not found for forty-eight hours, though twenty or thirty people were in search of him. Parties are occasionally mustered and counted, to see that none are missing. Should such an accident happen, there is no danger, if the wanderer will remain stationary; for he will soon be missed, and a guide sent after him. From the hall of congealed drops, you may branch off into a succession of small caves, called Cecilia's Grottoes. Here nearly all the beautiful formations of the surrounding caves, such as grapes, flowers, stars, leaves, coral, &c., may be found so low, that you can conveniently examine their minutest features. One of these little recesses, covered with sparkling spar, set in silvery gypsum, is called Diamond Grotto. Alma's Bower closes this series of wonderful formations. As a whole, they are called Cleveland's Cabinet, in honor of Professor Cleveland, of Bowdoin College. Silliman calls this admirable series, the Alabaster Caves. He says: "I was at first at a loss to account for such beautiful formations, and especially for the elegance of the curves exhibited. It is however evident that the substances have grown from the rocks, by increments or additions to the base; the solid parts already formed being continually pushed forward. If the growth be a little more rapid on one side than on the other, a well-proportioned curve will be the result; should the increased action on one side diminish or increase, then all the beauties of the conic and mixed curves would be produced. The masses are often evenly and longitudinally striated by a kind of columnar structure, exhibiting a fascicle of small prisms; and some of these prisms ending sooner than others, give a broken termination of great beauty, similar to our form of the emblem of 'the order of the star.' The rosettes formed by a mammillary disk surrounded by a circle of leaves, rolled elegantly outward, are from four inches to a foot in diameter. Tortuous vines, throwing off curled leaves at every flexure, like the branches of a chandelier, running more than a foot in length, and not thicker than the finger, are among the varied frost-work of these grottoes; common stalactites of carbonate of lime, although beautiful objects, lose by contrast with these ornaments, and dwindle into mere clumsy, awkward icicles. Besides these, there are tufts of 'hair salt,' native sulphate of magnesia, depending like adhering snowballs from the roof, and periodically detaching themselves by their own increasing weight. Indeed, the more solid alabaster ornaments become at last overgrown, and fall upon the floor of the grotto, which was found covered with numbers quite entire, besides fragments of others broken by the fall."